Amar Singh invites Jaswant to join SP

August 25, 2009 17:19 IST

Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has sent feelers to expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh to join his party.

"I have spoken with him and I have very candidly told him that he is not alone. I am too small a fry to invite him to my party, but it will be my fortune to enable him to do something to be active in politics through the platform of SP," Amar Singh told television channels.

Jaswant told Singh, who is undergoing medical treatment in Singapore after a kidney transplant, to focus on his health and get back hale and hearty, and that the two can then possibly talk it out, the SP leader said.

Asked whether he had invited Jaswant to join the SP, Singh said he told him: "I am saddened by the development in your party and I don't see any reason for the book (on Pakistani statesman Muhammad Ali Jinnah by Jaswant) being the cause for you being removed from your party."

"I will be too happy and too delighted to have someone as senior as Jaswant Singhji in stature. And also his views on partition are identical to that of our idealogue Dr Ram Manohar Lohia," he said.

The SP leader said Advani too had praised Jinnah earlier, but he was subsequently projected as the prime ministerial candidate.

Jaswant, who was shown the door by the BJP over the Jinnah issue last week, wants to remain in active politics, he said.